In the field of electrical lighting, LED (light emitting diode) elements are increasingly used due to their advantageous properties of high efficiency and long lifetime. Also, LEDs are already used for automotive lighting, including both automotive signaling lamps and automotive front lighting.
Mostly available today are flat LED packages, in the following referred to as “LED elements”, i. e. LED chips mounted on a flat carrier plate of e. g. rectangular shape. Several attempts have been made to employ such flat LED elements in LED lamps, in particular to replace existing automotive lamps such as (halogen) incandescent lamps.
In DE-A1-19624087 a lighting device is described comprising a plurality of LEDs, each emitting light into a preferred direction. A holding arrangement holds the LEDs in a predetermined arrangement relative to each other such that at least two of the LED point light sources emit light into different directions. In different embodiments, LEDs are mounted on plates, which may be arranged under different angles, or on an LED beam tube carrying multiple LEDs in three dimensional arrangement. The cross-sectional shape of the beam tube may be e. g. triangular, rectangular or other.